Mystique didn't have time to close her eyes this time. She stared into the bottomless darkness, her scream of protest sucked out of her lungs into the void. And then the light poured back in, and the sound and the scent of the sea, and the feel of sand beneath her feet. She spun around and slapped Azazel hard across the face.

"Take me back! Take me back NOW!"

He touched his cheek with his long red fingers, and his eyes went soft with hurt. But he shook his head firmly.

"No."

She beat her fists on his chest in frustration.

"God DAMN you, TAKE ME BACK! They have Erik!" He caught her wrists in his hands to hold her off, and exploded in anger for the first time since she had known him.

"NO! Is too dangerous. Is too late. No."

She struggled free of his grip, fixed him with a look of glittering hatred.

"They have him. They're getting away with him even now. He's your comrade; you know what they'll do to him. And you won't even try to save him? You FUCKING coward!"

He flinched. She almost regretted the word, but she was half-crazed with adrenaline and fear and wanted to hurt him. He stepped backwards.

"Is too dangerous for you. Not for me."

She realised a second too late what he meant; her eyes widened.

"Don't you dare-"

She reached out to seize him, but her hands closed on thin air as he vanished with a crack and a swirl of smoke. She whirled away with a scream of fury, kicked the sand and swore.

"Damn it!"

She seemed to stand there for an age, the tide thrashing behind her, too tense even to pace. She waited and waited, and eventually, finally, Azazel reappeared. Alone.

Mystique sagged, a cold horror running through her.

"He's gone. They have him."

It wasn't a question, but Azazel nodded anyway, wordless. He seemed shell-shocked.

Mystique sank butter-boned to her knees, stared towards the surging sea, not seeing it. She could only see Erik, beaten, bloody and senseless, strapped to that stretcher and being taken God knows where by God knows who. She looked at her hands where they lay on her thighs, the broken skin on her knuckles from the fight with their mysterious assailants. She dropped her chin onto her chest.

"How could this happen?"

Her voice was low, bewildered. Azazel spoke carefully, as if weighing each word.

"CIA. They attack me on roof, four men, just after I notice helicopter. I kill them, but by then you and Erik are also fighting, losing. I see man pointing gun at you. I-" He stopped, made a strange low sound deep in his throat. "I cannot let you die."

She whipped her head up, stared at him with burning eyes.

"We shouldn't have let them have him. We shouldn't have left him there."

Azazel couldn't meet her eyes. He stared at his feet.

"I cannot let you die."

She noticed he was cradling his collar bone with one hand. Curious, she stood and pulled his hand away. The black of his suit was shiny, soaked with blood.

"You're hurt!"

He batted her hands away, turned his back.

"It is nothing, nothing."

She could see the entry wound above his shoulder blade – a bullet had passed straight through him, back to front. She remembered the moment when the man had shot at her, the crack of the gun and that of Azazel's appearance simultaneous, remembered him spinning her around as they disappeared. The bullet would have gone right through her throat.

She took a hesitant step towards him,stopped when backed away jerkil. She stared at him, standing shame-faced and bleeding on the sand. He was only a few feet from her, but she couldn't even begin to find the words to bridge the gulf between them. A bone-crushing despair swept over her.

"How did they know? How did they know we were even there?"

He looked sideways at her, said nothing. Her mind was turning, dazed, trying to make sense out of the rubble that their lives had so suddenly been reduced to. The agent at Kennedy's hotel room suddenly came back to her.

Don't I know you from somewhere?

She drew in her breath sharply. That face. That perfect, pretty Raven face. The face she'd worn the whole time they were with the CIA. The face in the file they no doubt had on her, just like the one they'd had on Kennedy.

"It was me. It was my fault. I did this to us. To Erik."

He did not deny it. He did not know how to lie.

The full horror only hit her as she felt her breath start to hitch in her chest, felt the tears start streaking her cheeks.

"He's going to die. They're going to kill him, and its all my fault!"

Her voice rose in panic, caught on a sob as Azazel spun round and pulled her hard into his arms, pressed her face against his wounded shoulder, squeezed her until her ribs felt like they'd crack. She stood shivering in his embrace, feeling like she might blow apart like a stack of paper. As she sobbed inconsolably, Azazel crooned to her in Russian, held the back of her head in his hand, pressed her face into his injured shoulder so his blood smeared on her cheek.

"Shhh, siniy ved'ma, ne plach. I will get him back. I will find him and bring him home to you. Shh, dorogaya."

He wasn't lying. He truly believed what he said was true, that he could save Erik purely because he willed it so. Not even this calamity could really dent his self-belief, his utter confidence in his own abilities. Raven (for she had never been Raven so much as now, so helpless, so afraid) longed to believe it too, to trust in him. But that part of her that was truly becoming Mystique knew that if Erik was already dead, then that would be the best possible outcome of the fate she had unwittingly brought upon him.